Vancouver: The shareholders of post-production company Rainmaker Digital Pictures are expecting that compression will expand their investment fortunes.

While the company rides the wave of Vancouver service production, future growth is pinned to advancements in digital compression – the ability to put features on cd-rom, for example.

Rainmaker has invested in both mpeg and dvd technologies in its bid to become a service bureau for distributors and filmmakers who want to put their images into digital forms for distribution though the Internet and video-on-demand services.

Rainmaker remains coy about a pending contract with an unnamed North American motion picture distributor that is currently undertaking a test of mpeg technology.

Describing the company as a ‘potentially material client,’ corporate affairs vp Bob Cabral says that Rainmaker is doing compression work in advance of a signed contract. The work, should it be secured, means Rainmaker will be compressing up to 200 ‘a-list’ titles and 30 features per month.

Montreal-based analyst Simon Lussier, who works with Rainmaker’s underwriter, is bullish about the effect of high-margin compression on the company’s immediate bottom line. ‘Management believes that such a contract would represent $1.8 million of revenues and $800,000 of net earnings,’ he writes in a June report.

The vision for Rainmaker, says Cabral, is to control the processing of the image from start to finish, in traditional and state-of-the-art processes. By providing both mpeg and dvd services, the company provides clients with a variety of compression solutions.

Rainmaker, meanwhile, has expanded its traditional post capacity at its Gastown Post facilities by buying a new Telecine system that increases output by 25%. Rainmaker has recent contracts to do all or part of the post-production of 22 one-hour episodes of Two.

At Rainmaker’s inaugural agm June 19, Rainmaker’s net earnings for the seven months ended Dec. 31 (its new year end) were $486,000 (eight cents per share) on revenues of $5.9 million. For the preceding six months, earnings were $227,000 (four cents per share) on revenues of $4.8 million.

In the first three months of 1996, Rainmaker earned $454,000 (five cents per share) on revenue of $3.1 million.

Rainmaker went public on the Montreal Stock Exchange May 10 with an ipo that generated $8 million. Rainmaker comprises four subsidiaries: Rainmaker Imaging, Rainmaker Interactive, Gastown Post and Gastown Film Labs.